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Apple's earnings report for the second quarter of fiscal 2015 has arrived, and while the numbers are different the story is pretty much the same as last quarter. iPhone sales are way up, and they account for over two-thirds of Apple's revenue. Macs continue to grow at a respectable rate, while iPads take another sharp year-over-year tumble.

Apple broke quarterly records with $13.6 billion in profit and $58 billion in revenue, compared to $10.2 billion in profit and $45.6 billion in revenue in Q2 of 2014. It maintained a gross margin of 40.8 percent. These results easily beat Apple's guidance for the quarter, which predicted revenue between $52 billion and $55 billion and profit margins between 38.5 and 39.5 percent.

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

The biggest percentage of Apple's bread is still buttered in the Americas—it made $21.32 billion there this quarter—but growth is the strongest in China, which unseats Europe as Apple's second-largest territory. Apple made $16.82 billion there, compared to $12.20 in Europe. Sales are also up significantly in the Asia Pacific region, though they're down just a bit in Japan.

Many of Apple's products (including the iPhone and iPad) are mid-cycle at the moment, but Apple is still riding the sales wave created by its bigger iPhones. The company sold 61.2 million phones in Q2, compared to 43.72 million phones a year ago—all told, the iPhone line generated $40.28 billion for Apple in Q2, 69.45 percent of total revenue.

The Mac has had a somewhat more active quarter—new MacBook Airs and the MacBook Pro both came out in March toward the end of the quarter. The company sold 4.6 million Macs in Q2 of 2015, an 11.11 percent increase from the 4.14 million sold last year. Revenue is only up by 1.81 percent, though, indicating that most of the growth is coming from models with slightly lower margins. The Mac was the second-largest piece of Apple's revenue pie this time around, beating the iPad—at $5.62 billion, they're responsible for 9.68 percent of total revenue. Since these numbers run from the beginning of January to the end of March, the new Retina MacBook hasn't yet had a chance to make a difference to Apple's bottom line.

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

iPad sales have been on a year-over-year decline for over a year now. 12.6 million tablets is still a number that most companies would be jealous of, and the iPad made Apple $5.43 billion in revenue this quarter (9.36 percent of the company). Last year, though, Apple sold 16.35 million iPads, which means sales are down by 22.94 percent. This is the largest year-over-year decline yet, and it's probably not a coincidence that the iPad's decline became more pronounced when Apple introduced larger iPhones.

Finally, Apple's Services segment (iTunes, the App Store, iCloud, and so on) made just a shade under $5 billion this quarter, growing around nine percent. The "Other Products" segment, which includes the Apple TV, iPod, AirPort, and Beats headphones, made $1.69 billion this quarter. That 10 percent drop can probably be attributed to the (now-hidden) decline of the iPod, but the Apple Watch will begin showing up in that segment next quarter, so expect some sizable growth there.

Andrew Cunningham

Apple's guidance for the third quarter of 2015 predicts revenue between $46 and $48 billion and a gross margin between 38.5 and 39.5 percent. In Q3 of 2014, it made $7.7 billion in profit on $37.4 billion in revenue with a gross margin of 39.4 percent.

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Andrew Cunningham
Andrew wrote and edited tech news and reviews at Ars Technica from 2012 to 2017, where he still occasionally freelances; he is currently a lead editor at Wirecutter. He also records a weekly book podcast called Overdue. Twitter@AndrewWrites